On paper, this clash is as heavy-weight as they come. It features not only two of the top sides in the tournament, but also has India's favourite son - Sachin Tendulkar - taking on the man who is most likely to be his heir apparent - Virender Sehwag.
In reality, however, Mumbai come into this match on a high, while Delhi are struggling slightly with two losses against teams they would have expected to beat.
Mumbai have 16 points, and no other team has more than 12. The only way Mumbai will not qualify for the semi-finals is if there is a multiple team tie on 16 points (since at this stage there is no combination possible that will ensure that four teams end up with morethan 16 points), and the others edge Mumbai out on net run-rate. When you consider that Mumbai's net run-rate is +1.04, and the next highest net run-rate is Bangalore's +0.343, it is pretty clear that short of a whole host of statistical freaks, Mumbai are well and truly into the semi-finals.
They can thus afford to experiment and tweak their side in an effort to put the best combination out for the knock-out matches. It might be worth their while to give Graham Napier a chance and get Dwayne Bravo back into the mix. Napier comes with a domestic T20 strike rate of almost 150, and is a handy right-arm medium pace bowler, while if Bravo can get his batting going, he will be an invaluable all-rounder. In fact, Mumbai may want to bench quite a few of their regulars - especially amongst the foreigners - and give chances to those haven't had too many. We might well see Mumbai picking JP Duminy, Sanath Jayasuriya, Napier/McLaren and Bravo for the match, and giving a well deserved break to the likes of Malinga. The young Abhishek Nayar seems to have finally recovered from the injury that kept him out of most of the tournament, and if fit, he too should get a game. Mumbai's biggest disappointment so far has been the performance of Kieron Pollard, who has struck the ball hard and fiercely, but hasn't managed to stay at the crease to have any major impact on a match, with a highest score of 25 in ten innings.
Sachin Tendulkar continues to remain the main man for Mumbai, with almost twice as many runs as the next highest scorer in the side - Saurabh Tiwary. He is of course, capable of firing in all of Mumbai's remaining matches, but on the suspicion that the 'law of averages' must catch up with the man sometime (after only sporadically doing so over 20 years of international cricket), Mumbai have to start planning for how to win in case Tendulkar fails.
Delhi have more pressing worries on their mind than one man winning all their matches - they have to start winning matches again first. The defeats against Kolkata and Punjab will hurt them, since before those matches, they were on a winning streak and had looked one of the few sides capable of consistently challenging Mumbai. Delhi's best batsman has been Virender Sehwag, but a lot of his efforts have been in solo causes, with the rest of the team not supporting him, with the result that victories of Sehwag's bat have been rather lesser in number than would be expected - especially when Delhi have such good back-up for Sehwag on paper.
David Warner will always remain a hit-or-miss player, and Gautam Gambhir has made it clear on numerous occasions that that is the way Delhi want him to be, since on the days he comes off, he is an unstoppable force for Delhi. However, Gambhir himeslf, alongwith Collingwood and Dinesh Karthik have to play the role of middle-order enforcers, who do the bulk of the scoring when the openers fail. What hurt Delhi in their last two matches was that the middle order did not get going. With an opening combination of Warner and Sehwag, Delhi can expect fliers more often than not, but have to budget for the occasional failure as well.
The one good thing for Delhi was that Ashish Nehra finally recovered enough to play a game, and if Dirk Nannes recovers too then he will come in place of Ferveez Maharoof, which would strengthen Delhi's pace attack immeasurably. Daniel Vettori has been a bit of a let-down so far, leaking runs at 8.31 an over and taking just 2 wickets in the 3 matches he has played, but for a player of such proven ability, he is likely to be part of the starting eleven.
A full-strength Delhi against an in-form Mumbai is one of the marquee matches of the IPL. However, the last time these two sides met, Mumbai annihilated Delhi by 98 runs. Delhi should come fired up to exact revenge, and Mumbai will be equally keyed up, especially on their home ground. A potentially cracking contest looms.
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